The invention relates to a hinge for cabinet doors, with a door-related hinge part in the form of a cup which can be set in a recess in the back of a door, and a carcase-related part in the form of an elongated supporting arm of inverted U shaped cross section, which are articulated together by two hinge links journaled at their extremities in the cup at their one end and on the supporting arm at their other end, and having a closing mechanism which is provided in the supporting-arm end of the inner hinge link that is nearer the cabinet interior when the door is closed, and which has a cam surface which is formed corotationally on the inner hinge link and on which a resiliently deformable section of one leg of a substantially U shaped leaf spring lies with bias, whose other leg is joined by a bridging section to the end of the resiliently deformable leg remote from the cup and is held in the interior of the supporting arm.
Such hinges have proven their worth in practice (DE-PS 24 08 057) and have been used for many years in considerable numbers for hanging doors on the carcases of cabinets. The cam surface in these hinges is formed on a cam element which is formed by two plastic cam disks fitted onto the opposite lateral edges of the supporting wall end of the inner hinge link that is provided with a rolled pivot eye, and which are fastened on the hinge link. The resiliently deformable leg of the leaf spring cooperating with the cam surface of the cam element must on the one hand engage the cam with a certain bias, and on the other hand it must be additionally resiliently deformable to a sufficient extent to produce the desired closing characteristic. Therefore the leg and thus the leaf spring as a whole must have a certain length. This, however, requires that sufficient space be available in the interior of the supporting arm for the mounting of the leaf spring. Since the resiliently deformable leg of the leaf spring presses on the cam surface running along the cam body above the pivot eye, the spring is used to produce the necessary spring bias such that the deformable limb seeks to move away from the second leg of the leaf spring held in the supporting arm. The known closing mechanism is not directly applicable in those hinges in which the space above the front end of the supporting arm is narrowed, because for example the adjusting screw serving to vary the amount of overlap of the door on the front edge of the side wall of the cabinet carcase is offset relatively close in the front end area of the supporting arm so as to keep the supporting arm especially short. The case is especially critical if such a supporting arm is greatly offset, i.e., its front end adjacent the cup is at a relatively great distance from the inside surface of the corresponding carcase wall, since the said adjusting screw then has to be disposed in a trough like indentation in the web of the supporting arm. The wall terminating this trough-like indentation then additionally reduces the space available for the spring to such an extent that the known closing mechanism can no longer be contained in the supporting arm or can be contained in it only with great difficulty.
It is accordingly the object of the invention so to improve the known hinge that even in a case in which the space available for accommodating the leaf spring within the supporting arm is limited, it can be provided with a functionally corresponding closing mechanism which will be comparable as regards manner of operation and reliability.